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Thursday
In a Monday speech at the Charleston church that eight years ago saw a mass shooting, President Biden talked about how white supremacy is a poison that is ripping this country apart. Biden also criticized those people who are trying to whitewash American history and argued for truth, which in the words of Martin Luther King “shall make us free.” As Biden himself is going up against “the big lie” that he didn’t actually win the 2020, truth is of particular concern to him, and his remarks reminded me of what 18th century British poet William Cowper says about truth.
In his Charleston remarks Biden observed,
The truth is under assault in America. As a consequence, so is our freedom, our democracy, our very country, because without the truth, there’s no light. Without light there’s no path from this darkness.
In The Task, a long chain-of-association poem, Cowper talks about truth being a precious commodity that is nevertheless spurned by much of the world. When he says that the “proud, uncandid, insincere or negligent inquirer” looks with contempt at books that express the truth and reproaches ministers that do the same, I think of those in our own society who would dismiss Biden’s words as just politics. Some people are so jaded or partisan that they cannot hear what this good man is trying to tell them. Here’s the Cowper passage:
The only amaranthine flower on earth
Is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.
But what is truth? ’twas Pilate’s question put
To truth itself, that deigned him no reply.
And wherefore? will not God impart His light
To them that ask it?—Freely—’tis His joy,
His glory, and His nature to impart.
But to the proud, uncandid, insincere,
Or negligent inquirer, not a spark.
What’s that which brings contempt upon a book
And him that writes it, though the style be neat,
The method clear, and argument exact?
That makes a minister in holy things
The joy of many, and the dread of more,
His name a theme for praise and for reproach?—
That, while it gives us worth in God’s account,
Depreciates and undoes us in our own?
What pearl is it that rich men cannot buy,
That learning is too proud to gather up,
But which the poor and the despised of all
Seek and obtain, and often find unsought?
Tell me, and I will tell thee what is truth.
Truth as a pearl is a reference to the parable (Matthew 13:45-46) about the kingdom of heaven, which Jesus says “is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”
Maybe political spinmeisters and the cynical press, like the rich and the learned, cannot see the truth that Biden references, but it is clear to those of us who (to borrow the words of the prophet Micah) act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We recognize that the president’s words come from genuine empathy for others and from deep love of country.
Focusing on truth at the beginning of election season is not a bad place to start.